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An anonymous reader writes "On Friday, Chrome 33 was shipped out the everyone on the stable channel. Among other things, it removes the developer flag to disable the "Instant Extended API", which powers an updated New Tab page. The new New Tab page receieved a large amount of backlash from users, particularly due to strange behavior when Google wasn't set as the default search engine. It also moves the apps section to a separate page and puts the button to reopen recently closed tabs in the Chrome menu. With the option to disable this change removed, there has been tremendous backlash on Google Chrome's official forum. The official suggestion from Google as well as OMG! Chrome is to try some New Tab page changing extensions, such as Replace New Tab, Modern New Tab Page, or iChrome."

Whoever thought it was a good design choice, shifting the focus halfway across the screen after the user explicitly put focus on the search box... I sure hope they're no longer working in IT. That was just gross incompetence.

It probably didn't take as many skilled developers as Windows 8, but a lot of fine effort probably went into this, done by competent professionals.I'm sure with a few months of concerted effort, we can all develop the proficiency required to use the solution as intended; Don't be a Luddite.

What if it was working perfectly well for you, and you were completely happy with the product, and someone BROKE it for you? You knew how it worked, you knew how to use it, and suddenly the rug was pulled out from under you. Oh, and by the way, they also changed the recipe for Coke and changed the rice crisps in your Nestles Crunch to soybeans.

This is the major disconnect with open source, and a large reason non-programmers won't accept Linux: Developers change things because they think constant chan

Ctrl+k puts focus in the omni/address bar with a "?" which tells chrome you want to search rather than go to a url. Alternatively, you can add the ? as the first character in the address/omibar and this will also initiate a search rather than going to the site.

Doesn't help that the new tab page lives inside a protected "chrome://" namespace which extensions are almost entirely prevented from touching, and uses private APIs for things like showing the most used pages, meaning that anyone wanting to put it back how it was by writing an extension has to reimplement everything from scratch.

It is saying the Google is slipping down the slippery slope of evil, ignoring massive negative feedback as usual, and demonstrating clearly why dominance of their non-open open source browser is a bad thing for everybody except Google.

Not even all that controversial, since the UI change happened about a year ago and Chrome market share has continued climbing.

The only way to avoid annoying some percentage of your user base with UI changes is to never change the UI. Even clear improvements will generate screams of outrage from a few percent of the users, just because they don't like change.

In any case, if people don't like Chrome's UI, there are plenty of other options. If you really dislike this change, just use a different browser th

Really? As if Firefox hasn't done the same stupid shit? (granted, it's easier to rollback)

Safari? Seriously??? Unless you're on a Mac (or just like bloat), you don't run Safari.

Opera. Holy fuck, man. Those fools making sweeping UI changes in POINT RELEASES! It's the reason I've stopped using (mostly) and absolutely DO NOT UPDATE opera. (it's still my RSS reader, because I'm very lazy.)

and if no choice is good, someone will invent a new browser that will solve all our gripes and become wildly successful. Which of course is how Chrome came about in the first place. So Crime starting to suck is not a bad thing, but the herald of the next good thing.

I'm still using Chrome because I really like the ability to use a website's search feature from the Omnibar (for instance, typing "ama" -> Tab -> will perform a search on Amazon). I wish other browsers would do this--preferably Opera, Safari, or Firefox (the other browsers that have official 1Password extensions).

I should have made it clearer. I'm aware that similar functionality exists; I just prefer Chrome's implementation. It's automatic and, IMO, more visually pleasing. But those minor pluses probably aren't worth it. Thanks.

If an empty new tab page would be configurable and Chrome wouldn't exit if a single tab is open and I press Ctrl-W, I'd be perfectly happy with Chrome's tabs. For the latter, I use the "Live On" extension, which is a bit quirky, unfortunately. With Firefox I can fix both these issues, at least in about:config.

Are you kidding me? Firefox is almost as bad about this "completely fucking change the UI every six months" thing as Chrome is.

The real answer is Seamonkey, [seamonkey-project.org] which is basically the old Mozilla project under a different name. At this point it's basically FF 3.6 brought up to date with patches and actual improvements, as opposed to changes for the sake of change.

With all of the HTTP components in language API's that can be integrated into applications I'm wondering why more people don't just give up on web browsers made by others. Though I wonder how many companies would block you from accessing their site if the browser doesn't have the correct branding.

I'm going to assume you mean complete stack (HTTP, HTML renderer, JS Engine etc). While the HTTP layer is fairly simple (and thus implement well in a ton of APIs for each of the major platforms), the rest is BIG and to do it well is hard so it is not done well all that often. So what you end up with is either a re-skinned IE, Firefox or Chrome.

Now these exists, for a bunch of different reasons for example before IE had tabs a tabbed IE existed and people who want to sta

People get tired of these endlessly changing interfaces. These days these things are 'consumer products' used by people who just want to get their task done and not have to fuck around with some interface some dweeb or marketing wanker has decided will be more 'keen' or' spiffy' if changed significantly.They just want it to do what they did yesterday and not have to search around for a control they learned to use routinely.

Thumbnails of the websites you visit frequently appear under the search box. Simply click a thumbnail to visit the site.
To remove a most visited site, hover your mouse over the thumbnail, and click the X icon in the upper right corner of the thumbnail.
https://support.google.com/chr... [google.com]
I removed mine, opened a new tab and it was blank. I haven't restarted Chrome, so I don't know how long this effect lasts. HTH.

Chrome 33 was in Beta for a while before being released as stable. So these issues should have been picked up/highlighted then. How much negative feedback on the new 'new tab' page was there during the beta cycle? I am using Chromium beta cycle and soon got used to the new 'new tags' page.

Well, compare that to this fact: on Chrome 33 on Windows (and Windows only) all non-Chrome-Web-Store extensions are forcibly disabled and will not install anymore, with the exception of pushing them through domain group policy.

So, say goodbye to anything not blessed by Google, like extensions that allow "the unauthorized download of streaming content or media".Unless you want to use the Dev channel as an official workaround, or are content with loading extensions unpacked, with no auto-update.

It's not like I don't understand the problem, I've seen rampant Chrome crapware on clueless people's computers. But this is heavy-handed.

It's not like I don't understand the problem, I've seen rampant Chrome crapware on clueless people's computers. But this is heavy-handed.

I'm glad you understand the severity of the problem. We took no joy in introducing these restrictions, but I think we made a good compromise between security and user freedom. If you don't want the extension side-loading policy, you have a number of options:

I understand that there are several viable workarounds. Especially since on Windows, ChromeSxS actually works (hello, #38598 [google.com]), using unstable is relatively painless. But I can't shake off the feeling that you got a nice bonus of enforcing CWS TOS on the largest chunk of your userbase.

Non-Web-Store extensions never had auto-update to begin with. The only difference between loading unpacked and side-loading is that it's a bit trickier to install unpacked, and Chrome will warn you every time you start up.

This is simply not true. I've been an extension developer for quite a long time, and I've always hosted a beta version of my extension outside CWS, with auto-update, using update_url key in the manifest.

This is simply not true. I've been an extension developer for quite a long time, and I've always hosted a beta version of my extension outside CWS, with auto-update, using update_url key in the manifest.

Ah OK. I didn't know about this feature. Then yeah, I guess your users won't be able to use that unless they're on dev.

>"The official suggestion from Google as well as OMG! Chrome is to try some New Tab page changing extensions, such as Replace New Tab, Modern New Tab Page, or iChrome." "

My official suggestion would be to switch to using a browser that is designed, supported, and implemented by the COMMUNITY- Firefox. Google is going to do what Google wants to do to further their own goals, not necessarily ours. Over time, this becomes more and more apparent.